Although I didn’t previously know a great deal about Angus’ work, she was a contemporary of Pictures for Schools founder Nan Youngman (like Youngman who lived from 1906-1995, Angus’ life spanned much of the twentieth century; she was born in 1904 and died in 1993), and regularly contributed paintings to Pictures for Schools in the first decade of the scheme, as well as linocut designs for tiles. I had previously read that Youngman first met Angus (popularly known as ‘Red’ Angus due to her left-wing beliefs, developed during a trip to Russia as a young woman, where she was inspired by the concept of art as propaganda and the idea of ‘art by the people, for the people’) on an Artists’ International Association May Day march, where Angus was carrying a banner and singing a song (conjuring up an evocative image of Angus, who the exhibition showed to be an eccentric and colourful dresser!). I had also been told that Youngman and sculptor Betty Rea, together with Rea’s two sons, used to visit Angus at her rural cottage the Furlongs in the South Downs in Sussex.

The Towner’s exhibition does a good job of evoking the atmosphere of the Furlongs and the circle of friends and contemporaries who congregated there, including Angus’ former peers at the Royal College of Art and fellow artists such as Helen Binyon, Eric Ravilious, John and Myfanwy Piper, Henry Moore, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and the artist and educator Maurice de Sausmarez. Like the artistic hub based around Great Bardfield in Essex, which Angus visited, recalling that the homes were ‘wonderfully decorated’, mostly by the ‘poor wives’ of painters such as Ravilious and Edward Bawden, the rather primitive cottage was decorated with a homely combination of murals, tiles and wallpapers.

Tiles designed by Angus, as well as large-scale photographs of tiles and striking murals in situ in places such as post-war schools, universities and airports, are on display in the exhibition, alongside several of her paintings. Associated with a politically-charged socialist realist outlook, Angus’ painting focuses on landscapes and people, depicting the reality of what was around her in vivid, hyperreal shapes, textures and colours conveying light, atmosphere and experience, from cement works and train lines to the personalities and occupations of farming life. Particularly effective is collage of chopping wood. Other, more sketch-like work evokes friends, with a particularly striking example being a portrait of John Piper in front of one of his geometric paintings, the stripes of the cat on his knee, the grain of the floorboards, his pinstripe trousers and the sweep of his hair all contributing to a highly stylised image.

Just as important a focus of the exhibition is Angus’ career as an educator. Like Youngman, teaching was not Angus’s first choice of career; Angus took up employment as a teacher after the deaths of her brothers in the war. Unlike Youngman, Angus was employed by an independent school, North London Collegiate College. However, this appointment was to give Angus the opportunity to ‘revolutionise the relationship between student, teacher and school’. Like art educators such as Nan Youngman and Marion Richardson, with their focus on ‘child art’, Angus believed that children had ‘native talent’ and ‘sense of design’. However, where she differed was in her rejection of the growing trend for self-expression, which she regarded as producing outcomes where ‘everything is thrown in the wastepaper basket’. Taking her inspiration from William Morris, and aiming to break down the separation between art and life, Angus regarded children as ‘apprentices’ who would later be capable of designing their own homes and clothes. Angus appeared to have concentrated more on the practical, design-led aspect of art than conventional picture-making, encouraging students to use potato prints to come up with their own designs for tiles and wallpaper, which could be combined to great effect in different variations, and enlisting children to help create wallpapers and murals. In the less able, she endeavoured to cultivate an interest in art that would make them the patrons of the future. The exhibition discusses her notion of ‘creative patronage’, with Angus herself explaining that ‘people who are the most creative patrons are the amateurs, they’ve got to be creative themselves’ and ‘everybody’s creative if they’ve got creative patronage’. Also important in Angus’ approach to art education was the teaching of art history, with students taught in an annual, chronological progression from folk, Romany, canal and fairground art through Renaissance, Baroque, Gothic, ‘pop’, and so-on.

The exhibition is as much about Angus the woman as Angus the artist. Recorded and written reminiscences from those who knew her, whether as students or as visitors to the Furlongs, praise her inspiration and encouragement. Equally engaging are the opportunities to see Angus herself, on screen, at home and in her studio, in two documentaries played on a loop, one of which is narrated by her granddaughter Emma, herself a designer. The force of Angus’ considerable – and apparently formidable – personality, and her twin philosophies of ‘art for joy’ and ‘art for life’, permeate the show.

[…] with Herbert Read and Betty Rea, and admired her as an artist. He also lived in a caravan at Peggy Angus’ home in Firle, Sussex, and made melon and ginger jam in return for paying rent. He was one of […]